


Skyhold: Vignettes

by lustfulpasiphae (miraphora)



Series: Hawk of the Marches [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mercy Killing, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5443928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraphora/pseuds/lustfulpasiphae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She led the Inquisition through the Frostbacks to a new home, but Mira struggles to get her bearings. The Breach may be sealed, but her fight is only beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Forgotten Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her voice is hushed when she speaks, her heart hovering on a knife’s edge between fear and awe. “You’re…using your powers as a--a spirit. To help them.”

Mira stands for a moment in the archway of the stairs into the lower bailey with her back pressed against the stones, relieved that, at this angle, she can be unobserved for a Maker-blessed minute. 

She knows she handled Cassandra and Varric poorly--she hadn’t realized that under all of their banter and Cassandra’s suspicion was the potential for true animosity. Hadn’t realized that Cassandra had hoped all along for a better, more capable Inquisitor than herself. That realization had caught her painfully flat-footed. But she should have stepped in--should have been a peacemaker and a leader. Maker knew she’d had to do it often enough in the Fools, when Elyse was either too riled or too indifferent to get involved.

A long sigh, then, and the furtive hope that she might catch Varric at the tavern later and try to smooth things over with a draft of that Antivan Ale. Or…perhaps not the Antivan. There had been a certain wryness to the dwarven barkeep’s description of the ale that she didn’t trust. On the mental list queuing in the back of her mind is a clear notation: South Reaches single malt or Ostwick brandy, by the cask, preferably.

A self-satisfied smirk hides in the corner of her lips at the thought, and she continues down the stone steps to the lower bailey and the final visit on her list: the Commander.

* * *

 

There’s always something. Her excited anticipation for tracking down Josephine and seeing if one of her connections can look into liquor requisitions fades in the face of the hotly contested debate at the base of the steps. Cassandra has beaten her to the bailey and is standing at the ready as Solas and Vivienne square off in confrontation.

“Andraste, if you want your damned Herald, I need you to keep me from murdering anyone today,” she mutters fervently under her breath as she approaches the heated cabal.

The trouble, it seems, is the waifish blond boy who appeared at the gates of Haven before Corypheus’ assault. Cole. Solas has the keen gleam of the scholar in his eyes when he speaks of the boy; Vivienne exudes a carefully cultivated aura of censure. Mira understands both their concerns--she knows the boy is disconcerting, easily giving the impression of being as Fade-touched as her Marked hand.

But she remembers the way he acted as an intermediary with Roderick, and the way he appeared at the gates, his voice quavering but resolute, his arrival unlooked for--surely much the same way Mira herself appeared from the Breach? 

“I’ll speak to him. It’s only fair that he have the chance to make an account of himself.”

It’s not that simple, of course--he has a tendency to disappear, which is perhaps part of what makes him so disconcerting to the others. Mira shifts her weight and swings around a quarter turn as Solas looks to and fro with a searching expression. Mira’s yellow eyes glide across the bailey toward the triage tents, feeling pulled toward a  _not_ -ness.

It is not a  _wrongness_ , exactly. She remembers a conversation with Solas about spirits, and the warping effect that encounters with mortals and mortal emotions and perceptions have on their manifestation, but this wiry slip of a youth is not what she imagined. Neither are his disappearances a product of powders and artifice like her own combat tricks. She’s seen all manner of demons, up to and including a blighted Archdemon, and the boy is something wholly different. 

She ignores the dire murmurs from Vivienne and crosses the bailey, heading for the youth who has reappeared suddenly, standing above a soldier on a stretcher.

“Hot--white--pain. Everything burns. I can’t--I can’t--I’m going to…I’m dying--I’m--”

Mira stops short as the young man’s voice chokes out the words.

“--dead.”

The supine form of the soldier relaxes into the stillness of death. Mira should be shocked, shouldn’t she? She remembers his confusing account of Corypheus, though. “You’re…feeling their pain.”

The young man tilts his head slightly, as if listening to something she can’t hear. “It’s louder this close, with so many of them.” His voice is matter-of-fact, but Mira’s heart aches for him.

“Would…you like to go somewhere more comfortable? Quieter?” she asks hesitantly.

Still in that even voice, his words shaming her with their honesty. “Yes, but here is where I can help.” He approaches another failing soldier, and Mira finds herself trailing him. 

“Every breath slower. Like lying in a warm bath. Sliding away. Smell of my daughter’s hair when I kiss her goodnight.”

“Gone.”

And another. “Cracked, brown pain. Dry--scraping--thirsty--” The boy kneels, but does not appear to touch the woman, or to do anything that Mira can discern--and yet.

“Thank you,” the woman whispers threadily, as if she has been given a draught of cool water.

Mira’s skin shivers into gooseflesh, prickles of sensation rushing all over her body. A dream, half-remembered: Elyse’s arms around her, the suppressed pain of dire wounds and bitter cold, the warmth of an improbable fire in a howling void.

Her voice is hushed when she speaks, her heart hovering on a knife’s edge between fear and awe. “You’re…using your powers as a--a spirit. To help them.”

The boy stands, but doesn’t look at her, his eyes and most of his face hidden beneath the brim of his absurd hat. “I used to think I was a ghost,” he says, haltingly. “I…didn’t know. I made…mistakes. But I made friends, too.”

The story he tells her, hesitantly, quietly, his watery grey gaze shying away from hers each time he raises his head, breaks her heart. Templars, the Chantry, religious fervor turned to dire purpose. Judgment from the ignorant and unseeing. The chiefest reasons for her disregard for faith--concentrated here, in this boy, this spirit. There is so much in the words he doesn’t say.

“Cole.” She speaks his name softly, making it a gift of recognition:  _I see you, you are real_. “Would you like to stay? To help?”

He ducks his head slightly after a moment of alert stillness. “Yes. I help the hurt--the helpless. There’s someone…” He takes a long stride forward to the side of another fallen soldier, his pale fingers grasping with purpose the hilt of one of his wicked small daggers, holding it drawn and steady at his side as he kneels in the dirt.

Mira swallows, gaze flickering down to the soldier, who is ghost-pale with agony.

“Hurts, it hurts, it hurts,  _someonemakeitstophurtingMakerplease_ –” 

A small sound of distress curls in Mira’s throat, unvoiced.

“The healers have done all they can for him,” Cole shares, head tilted toward her--as though asking permission. “Every moment will be agony. He wants mercy. Help.”

/  _There’s always a choice. Can’t you hear it singing within you?_  /

There is a pocket of stillness around them, only the soft, weak sounds of the dying, but Mira is aware of the bailey at her back, the presence and watchful regard of people--her people, her Inquisition. Haven was a mad dash, a struggle for survival. This place, this imposing hulk of stone and the old bones of the earth, is their stronghold. The decisions she makes here will haunt her--until her Fate catches up to her.

Stark yellow eyes seek the pain-glazed stare of the soldier. It is empty of all but agony and a soul-deep plea for surcease. She steps forward, a firm hand grasping Cole’s shoulder--a tiny shock going through her at how spare his frame is beneath her fingers, as though he is barely there--

“Alright,” she breathes. “Help him.” She fills it with certainty, the gentle command of a captain to her lieutenant.

Cole cradles a careful hand behind the man’s neck, holding him steady as the knife’s slim blade seeks the artery in his groin, the last dregs of pain-wracked consciousness draining out with the heart-blood into the trampled dirt.

“My Creator, judge me whole:  
Find me well within Your grace  
Touch me with fire that I be cleansed  
Tell me I have sung--”

A quiet susurrus of chain mail and leather at her side as Cassandra approaches, her presence part apology for the hurtful words from earlier, part affirmation of support.

“--to Your approval.” That crisp Nevarran voice echoes her as Mira brings the Chant quietly to a close. 

Before them, Cole lowers the man’s head gently to the cold, dark earth. Mira steps back as he stands, letting her hand drop down to her side. He straightens his thin shoulders with sudden resolution, staring carefully ahead without looking at her, though she feels like he  _sees_  her in a way beyond mere sight.

“I want to stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter and tumblr @lustfulpasiphae


	2. Any Roost Will Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Haven, she had finally become attuned to the rhythm and shape of the camp and Chantry. But Skyhold is vast and new--the multiple baileys and battlements and winding tower stairwells confound her sense of direction. 
> 
> Mira tries to get her bearings.

Mira spends the rest of the afternoon in meetings and exploring the keep and getting hopelessly lost. There is a weight on her after the mercy killing and her conversation with Cole--if conversation it can be called--and the feeling of discomfort building in her shoulders grows.

In Haven, she had finally become attuned to the rhythm and shape of the camp and Chantry. But Skyhold is vast and new--the multiple baileys and battlements and winding tower stairwells confound her sense of direction. She is accustomed to navigating by the sky--the sun, the stars--and, when she was younger and her antics with Elyse kept them careening along the Free Marches coast like hellions, the sea. None of those markers are available to her within the stifling walls of the stronghold.

It reminds her of being stuck in Ostwick, and most particularly of the time she spent two fortnights under lock and key in the Bann’s castle before Elyse liberated her. The last time, in fact, that she had been in the Bann’s castle.

Mira finds herself wandering each tower to its highest point, leaning out of windows and embrasures, barely having a care for the crumbling casements and crenellations in some places. A sardonic smirk twists her lips, her eyes fixing on the looming peaks of the Frostbacks--there is eerie lyrium-blue ice forming low ridges and dips in the valley outside the walls of Skyhold, and she is halfway convinced this place is on the road to the Dark City and not even in the world at all.

“Wouldn’t that just be the honey on the sweet rolls if I took a tumble?” she murmurs to herself.  

The tower she has climbed is falling apart in truth. There is a set of weathered planks anchored a few lengths below the crumbling merlons, and she sure-footedly works her way around this border to the bailey-side of the parapet, hawkish gaze studying the interior from this new vantage.

There are trees and rooftops obscuring much of her view of the ground. Mira peers over the edge of her current position, measuring the distance to a sturdy roof peak below--she is relatively certain, from the fragrant smoke emerging from the chimney stack that it is the tavern. Her callused fingertips prod the mortar between the worn stones of the parapet, her eyes following the jagged, crumbling edge of the wall down a pace. There are soldiers patrolling the battlements, but it’s late afternoon and the sun is setting at an angle which casts most of the inner bailey in shadow, and which, she wagers, will prevent searching upward gazes that might discover her next bit of devilry.

She doesn’t let herself think about it, but grabs a handful of stone and hauls herself up and over the parapet. The toes of her supple boots seek and find the beam of the roof peak, and she releases herself down with a bowing and flexing of toes, ankles, and knees that is half a dance.

The air is open around her, exhilarating and free. She takes a step forward, two steps, toes pointing and sweeping forward along the beam, her motion swinging from the hip, arms held out slightly to her sides for balance. She forgets the keep, the people below, the oppressive stone, the Mark on her hand, the dying light in a soldier’s eyes, the screams of the burning dead of Haven. 

For a Maker-blessed moment she is just Mira--her body whole and fit and filled with a frisson of energy, swaying and dipping with athletic grace out into the open. At the end of the roof peak she sways for a knife-edge moment, her body coiling like a horse gathering for a jump, muscles recalling the tight bunching and release of a somersault through the air, disregarding the uneven flagstones four storeys below. She suddenly kicks one leg out in a pirouette, all that energy focused and redistributed in a tight spin, arms arched above her head with a satisfying stretch. A joyous laugh bursts from her chest, chasing on the heels of her nearly unconscious leap, and adrenaline and endorphin sweep through her body as she bounds back along the broad roof beam, taking a flying leap at the end up to grasp the nearest crenellation and pull herself back up to the parapet. 

Her face is flushed, heart thundering, as she settles back into the cover behind the merlon, legs dangling to either side of the jutting beam that extends out into the open roof of the tower before ending in a jagged ruin. Her mind is blank and clear of thought for a few moments, eyes replaying the whirl of the startling white peaks, grey stone, and snapping pennants from her spin.   

Mira laughs again, a throaty chuckle, and leans back against the cold stone. As her heart calms, the strains of a lute and a sweet voice begin to trickle up from an open window of the tavern below. She crosses her arms behind her head, closes her eyes, and hums along, resolving to remain in her perch until dusk has fallen and she can slip back to the keep unseen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter and tumblr @lustfulpasiphae


	3. Eyes On You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's just something about the Herald. Perhaps that she's mad. 
> 
> Cullen's perspective on the bit of devilry from the previous chapter.

Cullen isn’t the sort of man who looks a gift horse in the mouth. This Skyhold has strong bones, despite its ages-long neglect, and he is confident that between the workers the Ambassador has brought in and his own soldiers--who, in a twist of irony, are more than ready to turn their swords to ploughshares and take a stab at building for a change, while Josephine’s workers have taken to leaving needling messages nailed to scaffolding, expressing their fervent desire to take up arms and “make a difference”--they will have the stronghold shored up and livable in a reasonable time. 

 _Livable_ , he stresses to himself privately, mentally preparing for the inevitable polite disagreement from the sleek Antivan. 

She had sought him out in the bailey not a candlemark ago, to discuss the pressing need for quarries and lumber mills, and the possibility of redirecting troops in the field to secure a few likely targets. She had phrased it differently, of course. But he had been working with his fellow advisors long enough now to know the layman’s tongue corresponding to veiled intimations and carefully-couched suggestions of applied pressure and force. 

“I daresay she’ll learn to be grateful for chimneys that draw, even if there isn’t glazing in all the windows, eh?” Cullen voices the thought aloud, hands clasped on his pommel as he straightens his shoulders in a little stretch restricted by his pauldrons, and turns his head slightly to exchange wry glances with--

A scout. Belatedly, he remembers that Rylen has gone down to the camp at the base of the frozen escarpment. The beardless young man gives his commander the look of an addlepated nug and clutches a stack of reports to his chest.

Cullen swallows the profanity that wants to trip from his lips and coughs instead, drawing his brow down in a forbidding scowl to forestall any comment from the scout. He holds out an imperious hand and takes the tremblingly-offered reports, waiting until the young man has scurried away again to sigh with profound exasperation.

He can’t be certain, but he frequently suspects that somewhere along the way the Herald has recruited an entire village of Hinterlands hayseeds with a uniformly inbred look about the chin and eyes and sent them into his disciplined ranks just to plague him.

He makes a rumbling contemplative sound deep in his throat and shuffles through the papers. Reports from some of Leliana’s agents, redirected to his attention, mostly concerning scouting operations in Orlais; an appallingly terse report from Blackwall on the state of the stables, farrier’s forge, and various bits of infrastructure in the southeast quadrant of the keep--he makes a mental note to speak to the Warden in person next time rather than send a runner; a marked up requisition manifest from Threnn--he makes another mental note, this time to propose a supply mission in the Hinterlands at the next meeting of the War Table, because Threnn will gut someone if their drakenstone runs low again, and Cullen would just as soon it not be him or any of his, Commander of the Inquisition or no.

Pressure begins to build in his sinuses--thankfully only a combination of tired eyes and what he suspects might be another storm front working its way along the spine of the Frostbacks. The bailey has begun to darken as the sun sets, almost without him realizing, and he slips the reports into a leather packet, tucking them in under his elbow and rolling his head on his neck slightly to work out a kink or two. This exercise serves only to exacerbate the dire situation in his vertebrae, and he winces internally, reaching up with a gloved hand to grab the back of his neck and dig his thumb into an aching pressure point.

A deeper sigh works up from his belly and gusts through his lips at the slight easing of tension. His darkened amber eyes scan the battlements idly as he contemplates the option of a cramped rough-hewn chair in the tavern and a warm meal, or the more comfortable chair in his office and a slightly stale bit of bread and cheese from that morning. 

A distant glint of burnished chestnut and bronze adornment catches his wandering gaze and holds it fast.

Cullen squints, the crows-feet around his eyes deepening.  _Surely not_ , he thinks, startled.

A tall, lean form steps out along the roof line of the tavern, her bone-white tunic and taupe breeches nearly blending into the stone and sky in the background. But her chestnut hair is a shining beacon--shot through with flames in the sunset. The Herald.

_“Miraphora Antoinette Trevelyan, Herald of Andraste.” She had intoned it with sonorous derision, her hawkish gaze canting sardonically around the table at each of them in turn. A small part of him--in his heart of hearts, this part represented the shining-eyed youth who had so desperately yearned to be a Templar--had been appalled at her heretical disregard. But the larger part of him, the part responsible for his cutting humor and dry sarcasm, was charmed? entertained? refreshed. That was it. He was refreshed by her attitude. Despite having seen her on the battlefield, he had worried that her noble birth would out itself in missish foibles and a shirking of responsibility--or worse, that her Free Marches upbringing would make her a churlish and resentful participant in their Inquisition. But she had given no indication of being anything of the sort._

_He had spoken into the silence around the table without thinking, while Leliana and Josephine were still processing. “It’s quite a title, isn’t it? Little wonder the Chantry has censured us.”_

_He remembered Cassandra’s slightly strangled sound of shock, and Josephine’s gasp. But after a moment the Herald had just smirked at him, golden eyes glowing. “You all have quite the impressive bunch of titles yourselves. We’ll certainly give them something to pray about.”_

Around the War Room table following the settling of the Breach the first time had been his first real opportunity to see her. On the battlefield, all he had noticed was the blood on her leathers and the startling tattoos around her left eye. The candlelight of the War Room though had picked out hints of umber and gold and cinnamon in her hair--as the sunset did now.

Cullen stares somewhat dazedly, hand still resting at the back of his neck, forgotten. Across the bailey, the lithe form takes another step, and another, and is suddenly swaying and dipping gracefully, like a dancer, along the roof. He watches, unaware that his lips have parted slightly, his breath coming quicker, apace with her steps.

He sees the way her body gathers at the edge of the roof, and realizes with a stab of horror that while he has been enthralled that she is traipsing to her death, seeking it with open arms--

He staggers forward, his hip bumping and nearly unsettling the makeshift table, a warning, a helpless shout rising in his throat. 

Between one heartbeat and the next, all of that gathered force suddenly catches itself with a supple sway, arched arms, a sleek dancer’s spin--he doesn’t have words to describe it, but he is certain it is the sort of thing Josephine would know--and the Herald bounds with fleet and precise footfalls back along the roof line.

His heart is thundering in his chest fit to burst. He leans forward weakly, a knot in his throat, resting a suddenly trembling hand against the tabletop. A swift leap takes the Herald back up into the parapet, and he has to shut his eyes against the furious migraine that spawns in his skull with a vengeance. 

 _Maker’s--fucking--breath_.

He makes himself look at the broken tower again, once his heart has stopped trying to kill him, to be sure she has disappeared to safety once more, and then he turns heavily, one mailed fist clutched with desperation around the pommel of his sword, and makes all haste to his tower and the bottle of South Reaches single malt in the bottom cupboard of his desk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter or tumblr @lustfulpasiphae


	4. The Herald's Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric gets the Inquisitor drunk, curious to see what makes this Marcher tick.

She is drinking with Varric the next evening in the tavern, nursing the weak Antivan ale and reminding herself again to corner Josephine in her office in the morning--before they can drag her to that blighted War Room and distract her with a thousand reams of minutiae--about decent liquor. The dwarf had greeted her with every indication of not holding a grudge for her failure to intercede properly with Cassandra. But he has slipped in progressively heavier commentary on her need to get to know her companions better-- _y’know, Herald, so there’s no more of these misunderstandings, he says slyly_ \--and she wonders if his vengeance is a more subtle thing.

“You should have seen him carry you into the camp. It was like a scene right out one of my worst works, if I do say so myself. In fact, maybe I  _will_  write it. The Lion of Ferelden and the Hawk of the Marches: an epic tale of love at the end of the world.” He says it with a flourish of his sturdy hands, like he’s picturing the lurid broadsides already. Then a comically exaggerated expression of dismissal. “Too much, right? Nah, how about…just…Ladyhawke!”

That sets him off for a solid five minutes, while Mira splutters and drains the last of her ale, setting down the mug with a clack of horn on wood. “That’s truly absurd, Varric, even for you. Where do you come up with this horseshit?”

“The look on your face right now, Trevelyan.”

“Andraste’s tits. Cabot, don’t you have anything stronger than this unicorn piss?!” 

The barkeep gives her a dour look and plunks a heavy glass jar on the counter before her. For some reason it sets Varric off laughing again.

Mira gets ahold of the jar with grabby, eager hands. “What is this--Holy fucking Maker!”

The oath drowns out Maryden’s singing for a moment, causing a well of startled silence around them. Mira feels her face burn--part from mortification and part from the paint-stripping fumes wafting from the jar.

Varric chuckles and liberates the jar from her hands as conversation begins to pick up around them again. “I don’t know if you’re ready for this shit, kid.”

She’s not nearly drunk enough for the surge of bravado that spurs her to bristle at this remark. “The Free Marches are famous for their brandies, you know! I highly doubt some swill from the South can compete!”

That earns a droll smile. “Be that as it may, this isn’t from the South.” He splashes a generous dollop of clear liquid into Mira’s mug, looking like he can’t wait to see what happens next. “And it sure as fuck isn’t your fancy sipping brandy. This here is probably your dear Free Marches’ most  _infamous_  product.”

Mira brings the mug to her face, sniffing curiously. Her sinuses burn, but it smells like nothing so much as medicinal alcohol. Her narrowed yellow eyes shoot between Varric’s face and Cabot’s indifferent back. 

“Varric, you have to be joking. This smells like it came straight from the dispensary!”

The dwarf gives her a wry look. “I wouldn’t advise pouring this in any open wounds. But go ahead. Take a nip of that and then maybe I’ll tell you what it is.”

Mira cuts her eyes at him, still swirling the liquor, then tosses it back all in one fatalistic go. Varric laughs as she wheezes and coughs.

“Maf--erath balls fuck shit damn!” She can barely feel her face, but knows it must be contorted into the most demonic expression from the unabashedly entertained look on Varric’s face. Her eyes water and her throat feels like a hole is burning through it.

“What  _was_  that?!” she rasps.

Varric takes a judicious sip of his own careful dollop, giving a theatrical shudder. “That, when it’s at home, is hooch.”

Mira’s eyes shoot wide. “What the hell--”

The dwarf gingerly tamps the lid back into the jar, as if it might explode if shaken or unnecessarily disturbed. “In a few years and with a slightly better still, this might be whiskey. But this right here is a little earlier in the process. I’m not gonna lie, I’m surprised to see it this far south.” He shoots a glance at Cabot’s back, then lays his finger along his nose as he looks sidelong at Mira. “I think our dear barkeep is trying to have a bit of a laugh.”

Mira blinks owlishly at this highly improbable statement, then dissolves into giggles. Her face is still warm from the liquor, and if she’s honest, from the relief of having this moment of companionship. She hadn’t wanted to admit even to herself how absolutely afraid she had been that Varric might have used the justification of the new surroundings, influx of new companions, and her tendency to side with Cassandra, to put some distance between them. It would have hurt.

She stares down at the bar counter, tracing a fingertip through a bit of spilled ale. 

The stool beside her scrapes back and Varric slips around the bar while Cabot is back in the tiny kitchen, poking through the bottles until he finds something that makes him utter a satisfied “Aha.” She darts a look at the kitchen, then at him, her brows winging up curiously.

“C’mon, Herald. Let’s go find a corner and I’ll tell you some embarrassing stories about Hawke.”  _And find out what makes you tick_ , he thinks to himself.

Mira smirks and slides off her stool with the confidence of a woman who is certain she hasn’t yet started to feel the effects of her drink. “I can hardly wait!”

* * *

 

A companionable beer turns into a long session of drinking, eventually joined by Sera. The two rogues keep the Herald going until long after Maryden plays her last ballad and slips away, even after Cabot has banked the fire downstairs and stumped off to his bed. And in the early hours before dawn, when the young woman has given up a valiant battle to keep her hazed golden eyes open, the two leave her asleep curled up in a rough booth, a filched blanket from Sera’s closest hidey hole draped around her shoulders.

And that’s how the tavern gets its name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter and tumblr @lustfulpasiphae


	5. Religious Experience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She likes the way he speaks with his body, with his nervous tics and his constant shifting. Even when he’s nearly dead on his feet with obvious exhaustion.

Mira wakes in her own bed, stark naked, most of the sheets and blankets scattered on the floor and a nest of pillows built up around her. She has a very fuzzy memory of waking in the pre-dawn light on a hard bench and staggering across the darkened bailey, barely avoiding pockets of torchlight around the night watch. A deep groan escapes her, crawling out of her scratchy throat like some dead thing, and she buries her face back in a pillow. 

She re-emerges almost immediately, realizing every inch of bedding and her own body reeks of alcoholic sweat. “Andraste wept,” she rasps with the fervency of one who hews to religion only in times of extremity. 

There’s a squeak and a clatter from the direction of the fireplace as she sits up. A wide-eyed serving girl is standing beside the copper tub where it has been set before the fire, clutching a large water pitcher to her chest with splayed hands. Mira rubs a hand over her face and pushes her lank hair back, mind slow and temples throbbing.

It doesn’t occur to her to cover herself.

The girl is solid pink, and stammers as she backs toward the stairs. “Your Worship! Beg pardon, I didn’t mean to wake you! Lady Montilyet--ah--she asked that a bath--well--your bath is ready!”

Mira watches, nonplussed, as the girl scurries back down the stairs. The slam of the door causes her to wince a bit, and she struggles to blink her way into alertness, mind still processing.

After a moment or two of trying to decide if she is feeling nauseous or not, she settles firmly on the latter, and shuffles toward the bath. The arched Orlesian doors are shut tight for once against chill, and the fire radiates a comfortable heat. The carpet is toasty beneath her toes--and the water, when she dips her fingers in cautiously, is perfect. 

She’s nearly submerged, limbs folded up to fit, when it occurs to her that she was naked when the girl left. A rueful snort escapes her before she lets her head slip beneath the water, wondering what Josephine will say later when she hears about the incident.

* * *

 

When she emerges from her quarters into the Hall, it is mid-morning. The crowd of Orlesian nobles--the guinea hens, as she has come to think of them--is largely absent from the Hall, and Mira frowns, giving her gaudy throne a wide berth as she traverses the long room. Varric is seated at his usual table by the foremost fireplace, papers and an inkpot strewn across the surface.

“Well good morning, sleeping beauty. How are you holding up?”

Mira comes to a halt beside the table and gives him a wry smile. “Better than I would have expected. I’m getting too old for that sort of nonsense, you know.”

“Aren’t we all. We filled you full of elfroot tea before we left. You’re welcome, by the way,” he adds with a grin, gesturing for her to join him at the table.

Mira takes a seat with her back to the fire, angled so she can still see the entrance of the Hall from the corners of her eyes. She gives a wry chuckle. “I  _thought_  I had vague memories of being very sloshy and needing to piss like a racehorse when I stumbled back in the wee hours.” 

There is a platter laden with crusty warm bread and a half rasher of bacon with a rich puddle of drippings in the center of the table. Mira looks askance of Varric, her mouth watering.  

The dwarf smiles with satisfaction and sits back, setting down his pen. “I intercepted a very flustered maid before you came down--she looked like she’d had a--how should I say this?--a  _religious_  experience. Thought I should probably redirect her energies before she got carried away with herself--and I imagined a bit of breakfast might not go amiss.”

Mira bursts out laughing, her yellow eyes crinkling. “Sweet Maker. She certainly got an eyeful, the poor thing.” She helps herself to bread and bacon, swiping the former liberally through the drippings and feeling the first bite of grease and flavor fill in all her hollow bits with warmth. “You’re a good friend, you know that?”

Varric gives an easy chuckle and winks. “Hopefully you remember you said that when I start writing lurid novels about you.”

“Well, Hawke still speaks to you, so I will trust that it’s possible.” She settles deeper into the chair, feeling comfortable in her skin and in her surroundings for the first time since coming to Skyhold. “Just be gentle with anything I told you last night,” she adds, as an afterthought, gnawing contemplatively on a bit of bacon.

“The chronicles of the Band of Fools? Don’t worry, I’ve got to save something for the prequel, you know.”

Mira rolls her eyes and uses the clean back of her hand to shift his papers around, peering down at the table between bites. “Is that what all of this is, my saga?”

Varric shuffles papers together, rescuing a bit of stray parchment from her injudicious bread-waggling before she can drip grease on it. “Now, that would be telling. Your position may come with some perks, but early access to my material isn’t one of them!” he chides good-naturedly.

She opens her mouth to protest that such a proposition could cut both ways, and how would he feel about no more trips into the field to watch her in action, but a voice hollers at her from the entrance of the Hall: “Tawny!”

Varric watches the way those predatory eyes flare with a sudden pain at the nickname, reflecting with the merciless analysis of the writer that every hero he’s ever known has come from tragedy. Mira has started to wear hers with a sort of grace, though. He wonders a bit if it’s comfortable like an old boot, or if this composure is a hard-won product of her experience in the Inquisition. 

Sera bounds to the table and leans down with careless grace to throw her arms around the back of Mira’s chair, her pointed chin resting on the Inquisitor’s shoulder. The pain settles, mellows, goes deep. Varric turns his attention with visible ostentation to organizing his papers and capping his inkwell, feeling the slightest niggle of guilt for his prying gaze and endless cataloging thoughts. 

“Naughtypants Herald, I bet you’ll never guess what I heard on the way here!” Sera crows with glee.

Mira tilts her head with a laugh, glancing across the table to share a knowing look with Varric and realizing that he’s gone back to his papers. Oh well. “I can probably guess, but then you’d never have the fun of telling me, would you?”

Sera turns the chair next to her around and straddles it, sparkling with mischief. “That’s the naked truth, innit?” She giggles at her own joke, and Mira rubs a knuckle against her lips to hide her smile. 

“Busy little bees, you know. Telling stories. Very  _worshipful_  stories!” Sera drawls and laughs and rocks in her chair with barely contained energy. “And the bees weren’t even in the chapel!”

Mira shakes her head with amused resignation. “It sounds like there were a shocking number of bees buzzing with this story. I don’t imagine they were buzzing  _quietly_ , were they?” 

“Oh no!” Sera gives her wide eyes and a cheerful buzzing noise. 

“Oh well. I was bound to create an incident for Josephine to clean up eventually.”

Sera drums her fingertips on the table with a sudden agitation. “It  _is_  a little much though, innit? All that buzzing, and they didn’t even get any honey!” 

Varric coughs, looking up suddenly and catching Mira’s eye. They both laugh. Sera falls into muttering about honey and honeypots and bees and stings, sounding a little bit jealous, all things considered. Mira props an arm on the back of her chair and leans back a bit more comfortably. 

“So what were you doing in the chapel with the bees? And in fact, do we even  _have_  a chapel in this monstrous old wreck?”

Sera’s muttering trails off and she slides a momentarily serious look in Mira’s direction. “Well, there’s Andraste, isn’t there? And there’s the garden. I reckon She never needed more than a few trees and the sky for Her chapel.” 

Mira parses this as the erstwhile Orlesians begin to trickle back into the Hall around them. “The courtyard, then?” She looks askance at Varric. “Mother Giselle, you think?” The dwarf shrugs one shoulder noncommittally.

Sera rests her chin on her folded arms and hunkers down a bit in her chair. “Just a little bit of Grace, for the fallen, right? I reckon She’d want us to be glad it isn’t us down in the valley frozen to bits under the snow.”

Mira’s lips twist a bit. Services, then. For the dead of Haven. She picks at a splinter in the tabletop, thinking about how it must have looked that she wasn’t there, and wondering if she cares. Well, damn Mother Giselle anyway for deciding on a whim to go in for public spectacle. 

Sera chortles suddenly, and Mira realizes she’s spoken aloud. “Not  _just_  the Mother and her children, oh no. She welcomed all creatures great and small, did Andraste. Dogs and crows singing the Chant--what next!”

Mira arches a brow, uncertain whether to take this bizarre statement literally or not. Varric clears his throat significantly. 

“I can only imagine that what our silly friend is trying to say is that Nightingale and Curly sang the services. And that brings me to my price for breakfast!”

Mira groans and runs her fingers back through her hair to settle it out of her eyes. “Never trust a surface dwarf, I swear to the Maker.” Her mouth kicks up in a half-smile to take any sting from the words.

Varric winks. “You’re learning. But--yes. I think you know what I’m going to say. You should really go deal with that.”

 _That_. Whatever  _that_  was. Mira taps a staccato rhythm on the table and huffs a breath. She vaguely recalls having gone through any number of arguments the night before against Varric’s wild theories about chemistry between the Commander and herself, and yet here he is, persistent and unflagging in his convictions.

She rolls her eyes and pushes away from the table, flicking her fingers gently through Sera’s tasseled hair and earning a scrunched face. “Well, at the very least I should go and inquire after the services and see how much damage my absence has done.”

She says this, to give herself the illusion of an excuse, even though this is a question that should most certainly be directed to Josephine. Varric gives her an indulgent and knowing look. Sera snickers into her hands.

“I’ll…just go do that. Now.” 

She grumbles indistinctly under her breath and turns away from the table, making her way out of the Hall into the sunshine, sidling absentmindedly past a pair of Orlesian ladies who are giving her a mildly scandalized look from behind their elaborate neck-ruffs.

* * *

 

He can only recently have returned from the inner courtyard and the impromptu Chantry service, but already his agents are clustered around the makeshift table, reports clutched in mailed fists or hands empty and waiting for directives. 

Mira stalls just outside of this crowded orbit, losing whatever nerve drove her from the Hall and down the stone steps. In the back of her mind is a clear escape route, behind her and to the left, taking the stairs at the westernmost corner of the lower bailey up, around the switchbacks and through the crumbling tower, then up the parapet, to the roof of the tavern--it’s about the only route she is confident she can replicate in this confusing place, aside from the return to the entrance of the Hall and the long traverse to her quarters. She thinks about taking it, while her eyes skim over the Commander’s armored form, lingering on the absurd ruff of his coat, the wind-roughened planes of his cheeks, the hooded shadows of his eyes. He looks tired.

One of the soldiers catches sight of her, his eyes widening just a trifle. Mira watches with her brow crinkling as he makes a frantic, furtive gesture--his momentary lapse of attention earns him a scowl and an impatient word from the Commander, and he scurries away hastily. As if by magic, the other soldiers fade away as well, leaving the Commander alone.

He looks about, at a loss, and spots her as she takes a few more steps, driven into the suddenly empty space around him like energy into a rift. She tries to imagine him carrying her, as Varric claims, and can’t--she’s so tall, nearly as tall as he is, she can meet his eyes almost on a level and she thinks sometimes it discomfits him, and she’s got the heavy, long bones of the Marchers rather than the willowy frame of her Orlesian mother. The image her mind conjures is truly absurd, and her lips twist before compressing.  

He speaks into the silence as if they are continuing a conversation, before she can think of what to say. “We set up as best we could at Haven, given its exposure. We could never have anticipated an Archdemon, or whatever that was. I could wish that we had been given more time, but--”

He trails off, amber eyes resting on her face, a hand rising to rub the back of his neck uncomfortably. Mira’s lips curl just at the corner, a hidden smile. She likes the way he speaks with his body, with his nervous tics and his constant shifting. Even when he’s nearly dead on his feet with obvious exhaustion.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she asks, her voice lilting upward and head tilting.     

Something flickers in his gaze and he shifts again, lowering his hand back to his pommel and not answering her teasing question directly. “This place is highly defensible, but if Corypheus strikes again, we may not be able to withdraw--and I wouldn’t want to.” The lines around his eyes deepen as he leans forward to rest his hands on the makeshift table, staring fiercely down at the maps and missives. “We must be ready to stand here--or to fall. Work on Skyhold is underway, guard rotations are established. We should have everything on course within the week.” He turns his head to her, fixing her with a piercing stare. “We will not run from here, Inquisitor.”

It’s the same thing he has been saying around the War Table--she has heard these words before. She knows it galled him to abandon Haven, but that he did it willingly, because she commanded it, giving her only the reassurances she needed before leaving her to go--likely to her death. But here, in this moment, without Leliana’s prying eyes or Josephine’s diplomatic calculations, he gives her the rest, without speaking. 

_I do not rest, I will not rest, until I know we are safe. That you are safe._

His eyes are hot, intense on hers, like the burn of a good brandy. Mira feels a creeping warmth in her cheeks, the hollow of her throat, her lips, and looks away, reaching frantically in her mind for something safe to say. Her excuse for coming to see him.

“Sera tells me there were services in the courtyard,”  _that you sang again_ , “I am sorry that I was unable to attend.”  _I’m sorry that I didn’t hear you._  “How many were lost?”

The fire in his gaze gutters and he looks back down at the maps, flexing his hands against the table. Mira tries not to watch the way his shoulders bunch and shift, pauldrons roiling. “Most of our people made it to Skyhold, thanks to you. It could have been worse.” He says it like he is reminding himself, and she wonders what he sees in the white space of the maps before him--if he sees troop movements and logistics or the howling white of the blizzard, the deadening rush of an avalanche.

“Morale was low. But matters have improved greatly since you took the role of Inquisitor.”

Mira’s lips twist wryly. “Inquisitor Trevelyan,” she drawls. “I wasn’t looking for  _another_  title.” She sees his shoulders tighten and tells herself that it’s good--it’s safer when he has that Ferelden commoner chip on his shoulder, when he looks at her and sees the titles and not the woman. It’s what she wants. “It sounds odd, don’t you think?”

“Not at all.” His voice is beautiful, even when he’s formal, especially when he’s cold.

She almost can’t help herself, asking archly: “Is that the  _official_  response?”

He stands, giving her a searching look, before chuckling softly--maybe at her, maybe at himself, maybe at nothing she can discern or understand. “I suppose it is. But it’s the truth. We’ve needed a leader from the start, and you have proven yourself. The Inquisition will be better with you at the head to guide us.”  _Maker guide us._

Mira feels a trickle of warmth down her spine, casts her gaze down. “Thank you, Cullen.” Void take her, but she likes the feel of his name on her tongue. What is wrong with her?

Cullen feels a smile tug at the scar on his lip, feels his heart squeeze a little--not the terror-wrenching squeeze of watching her on the roof, just the traitorous squeeze of emotion--the sort of feeling he had run from when he was younger and full of himself and the Order.

They stand in silence for a moment that feels longer than it is. Mira looks up at him, hoping her furtive glance is concealed by her thick lashes and the fall of her hair. Her throat tightens at the expression on his face--at how beautiful his lips are when he smiles and the scar kicks one corner of his mouth up, giving it a roguish cant at odds with his armor and aura of command. She is a Void-damned fool. 

“Our escape from Haven--it was close.” She begins speaking around the lump in her throat without thinking--because if she doesn’t, she’ll do something truly regrettable, like say his name again. “I’m relieved that y--that so many made it out.” 

“As am I.” He says it softly: simple words. They could mean anything. His gaze shears away, and they fall into a pregnant silence.

Mira thinks of the things she could say: “ _Did you carry me? Why did you care? Don’t you hate me for abandoning the Templars? Don’t you think we’re too old for this? That we should know better?_ ” And the most important question, the one that sits like a stone deep in her belly: “ _Don’t you know I can’t do this, I can’t lose anymore, don’t you know how dangerous I am?_ ” 

She can’t say any of it. The words are a solid mass in her throat, they won’t come out. She begins to turn away, to leave. She knows how painfully awkward this moment is becoming--surely he must think she’s mad?

He steps forward, his body driven while his mind still hesitates, one hand reaching--haltingly--not quite touching her elbow. “You stayed behind. You could have--” The words have been rattling around in his chest since he pulled her out of the snow, the stark fear of them renewed when he watched her the day before on the roof, the careless grace of her dance with Death. Doesn’t she realize that she’s not alone? Can’t she hear what he says, below his words?  _I will walk into the Void with you, if you but ask, I will fight our way through to the Maker’s Light, I will not allow--I will **not**  allow--_

“I will not allow the events at Haven to happen again.” Her yellow eyes are soft, golden, when she turns her face to him again. He can see that she wants to flee, the way she carries her weight on her back foot, steady but mobile, ready at a moment’s thought to twist and pivot and take flight away from him. “You have my word.”  _My word, my sword, my oath, my body. I will shield you. Ask._

Something shatters in her gaze. He watches the movement flow through her, knows he has lost her, he has made a grave miscalculation by letting emotion drive him. She stumbles over her own feet as she turns, toward the tower. He is a damned fool.

But as she steadies herself and runs, he hears a choked: “ _Cullen_.” His heart slams against his chest and he nearly follows her. But he knows--he thinks he knows--what is driving her, the need for escape, for space, for clear air and freedom from a clamor. And there is an agent at his back again, with more reports. The business of the Inquisition, of war, continues unchecked. 

He resigns himself, lets her go, tries not to punish his soldiers with his frustration. She knows, or she does not. She will come back to him, or she will not. 

He will wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter or tumblr @lustfulpasiphae


	6. Living With Loss, Dying With Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I tell you this so that you will understand that I am no stranger to tragedy. And so that you will hear me when I say: we have both learned to live with loss, and, I think, to die with honor. And that is no small thing.”
> 
> After closing a particularly difficult rift in the Hinterlands, Cassandra shares some of her history to connect with a rattled Mira.

Mira spends the next fortnight in the Hinterlands. She tells herself that it’s because she has been neglecting her duties for too long, that she can’t allow the refugees and the people who have come to rely on her to think that she has abandoned them in order to court Orlesian favor--and that is partially true, just true enough that Cassandra thinks nothing of their abrupt return to the field. But she is mostly running away, trying to ground herself, trying to pretend that if she gives it a little time, everything will be the same when she returns to Skyhold.

She takes Cassandra with her--she’ll always take Cassandra, Cassandra is her stalwart Seeker, her loyal knight, the woman’s presence at her side helps fill a void left by Elyse. And she takes Dorian--because Solas has begun to make her uneasy since they reached Skyhold, and because the Altus was with her in Redcliffe-of-the-future, has seen her weak from the fate of her companions, and has never once mentioned it again. She has not made the mistake of calling him apostate or Magister, even in jest, since their conversation--she has enough rudimentary Tevene to appreciate the difference between the terms, and there is something about the way that Dorian says “altus” that makes her think that, despite his blasé explanation of Tevinter class systems, he wants to be more, to be “high,” “profound,” “deep-rooted,” to recapture the archaic meaning. Sera volunteers--she wants to see how much damage a Tempest and a fledgling Artificer can do, still holds out hope of convincing Mira that bee grenades and virulent poisons are superior to “faffing about with toys.”

They are deep into the southwest, scouting out the rumor of mercenaries--no mere bandits, but paid, professional thugs with quality arms and armor. Mira is reminded of the well-outfitted “bandits” of the East Road, and of smugglers in the Free Marches, and suspects that if she follows this thread to its end, she will find lyrium of one kind or another. She has nothing personal against smugglers--she and Elyse had used the Fools in the past to ensure supplies of blue lyrium were making it safely to the apostates of the Marches, and she had reached out to some of those same contacts when the mages arrived in Haven, discussing it quietly with Leliana, arranging an auxiliary source in case Josephine’s contacts among the surface dwarves became unreliable. 

But she will not countenance red lyrium--she will seek it out and eradicate it. It is an objective she and Varric agree on wholeheartedly, and even more so after seeing Corypheus’ Red Templars.

* * *

 

They encounter rifts, deep in the western hills. They are…stronger…more volatile, out here on the edge of the countryside, far from the elvhen technology she and Solas had activated in the heartland to help stabilize the Veil. She begins to regret leaving him behind, despite her misgivings. 

She hadn’t properly appreciated the impact his Veil-enhanced magic made on the ease of their encounters. Dorian is all fire and doom, deadly and impressive, but Mira has come to rely on Solas to keep them all alive in the heat of battle--she begins holding her potions in reserve for Cassandra, fear curling around her heart.

Things go pear-shaped while she is struggling against the forces within a rift, attempting to seal it in the midst of the fight to halt the flow of demons. Dorian’s flames flare, sheeting around her in an incandescent wall, blocking off the wraiths who have noticed her and cutting off their approach. 

Things happen very quickly after that. The rift explodes, sending a shockwave through the demons on the ground, stunning them. A sharp cry rings out, Dorian shouts: “Cassandra!” One of Sera’s grenades goes off, too close for comfort, shattering a burning wraith into bits.

Mira whirls, already falling to one knee for a long draw that will wing away with sleep and surcease--

Cassandra is on her knees, pinned like a butterfly on a board with the spindly, spiny foot of a terror demon clawed into one of her armored thighs, its frightful hands wrapped around her shoulders in a sham of an embrace, it’s horror of a face lowered. It is frozen for the moment from the concussion of the rift, but already it twitches, its gaping maw creaking closer to Cassandra’s vulnerable throat--

An explosive arrow will take precious seconds to detonate. 

Mira drops her bow without thinking, draws the dagger from the small of her back and has shifted into shadow and across the battlefield to the Seeker’s side in the time between two heartbeats. There is a spine-rattling shriek as Mira springs up from her crouch, sinuously inserting herself into the diminishing space between the Seeker and the demon, her dagger driving up into the wispy rib-cage of the terror with more force than finesse, and still driving as her crouch becomes a leap, all of the force of her legs and lower body flinging her upwards and driving the demon back, her arm and dagger buried into its hollow chest cavity as far as the elbow. 

There is a screaming in her ears, a harsh, throat-tearing noise--and then the world explodes again.

Force drives out from her Marked hand and the terror shatters into rancid gunk, spattering around her. There are accompanying spatters from around the open cavern, and the scream still echoes, traveling up into the sky above. Mira collapses back to the ground, her throat raw and her gulping breaths tasting of blood--she realizes, belatedly, that the screaming was coming from her.

There is a weak shimmer around her--one of Dorian’s rudimentary barriers. She coughs, spits, trying not to gag, and scrambles around to check on Cassandra.

The Seeker is battered but upright on her knees, staring at Mira with wide-shot dark eyes. Mira can’t even imagine what she must look like, covered in Fade-touched gore. She must be a fright. These inane thoughts filter through her mind, unanchored and driftless, as silence reigns around them.

Usually Sera is quick to return to her side at the end of a fight, but the space around Mira is curiously empty. 

“Are--you alright?” Mira rasps, fumbling at her belt for a potion. But Dorian is there, briefly touching her shoulder with a forestalling hand, and presses an unopened phial into the Seeker’s hand. 

“There we go, drink that up straight away so that we can get back to camp. I don’t know about you, but I am positively unsightly, and I refuse to encounter any more strapping mercenary types in such a state!” Dorian’s glib banter washes over her as he helps Cassandra to her feet.

Mira struggles upright, feeling curiously weak. She stumbles a bit, and then Sera is there, putting her bow into her hands, before flitting away again. Her head feels like it’s full of bees and cotton fluff. She turns to be sure the rift is shut, unable to understand why she feels so odd, but the space behind her is empty of the characteristic glow.

Her brows pull together a little, and she swings around again, nearly bumping into Dorian, who has put out a hand to grasp her elbow. Why--does--she feel--so--strange?

“Inquisitor. Mira. Darling, I’m going to need you to pull yourself together. I’m no strapping Commander to carry you a league through the hills.”

Mira shakes her head, takes a few steps forward at Dorian’s urging, her boots squelching in the piles of Fade-touched effluvia covering the floor of the cavern. That’s not right. She should be protesting--the teasing comment--the early end to their hunt--

Cassandra’s lithe, armored figure appears at her side, a lean arm corded with muscle anchoring around her waist and supporting her. “Come, Inquisitor. The Tevinter is correct. Let us return.”

She can’t fight her way clear of the fuzz in her head, and allows herself to be led.

* * *

 

She wakes in a tent with no clear memory of how long has passed, or how she got there. The scenario reminds her disconcertingly of waking after her lone trek through the blizzard following her encounter with Corypheus, and she takes quick stock of herself. Limbs intact, no broken ribs--and much cleaner than she has any right to be. 

“Sera, you better not have peeked, you dirty hussy!” She hollers this as she loosens the tent flap and sidles out, startled by the sudden quiet as she emerges.

Dorian and Cassandra are standing near the fire, and it’s obvious from their posture that they were speaking heatedly. Sera is on the other side of the camp, picking the fletching on an arrow to shreds. There is a small pile of debris at her feet--it isn’t the first arrow to meet this fate.

Their eyes are all on her. She begins to feel uncomfortable, and struggles again to recall why they are here, in the camp, when the last thing she remembers--the last thing she remembers--

_Cassandra’s red-wreathed eyes, burning into hers before she strides through the massive doors of the Redcliffe Keep, sword drawn, lips firm with resolve. Cassandra’s scream and the looming figure of a terror demon, horrible gaping maw wide with an insatiable hunger._

Mira crosses her arms tightly across her chest to hide any tremor of her hands, to hold in the choking tightness under her breastbone. Her yellow eyes burn, dry and stinging.

The Seeker exchanges a look with Dorian, who takes a step to her side. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got kicked by a mule.” She tosses it down like a flippant gauntlet, daring them to continue with this significant  _looking_  and coddling. Her eyes steal across the camp to Sera, who is studiously not looking at her.

“My apologies. I must have overdone it a bit with the Anchor. Have we lost much time? I don’t want the trail of these smugglers to go cold.” That’s right. Business. The business of war.

Cassandra speaks carefully, her phrasing making her words as much an apology as a suggestion. “I have been thinking that perhaps we would do well to summon Solas. Sera has scouted the areas ahead, and it is possible there may be elvhen artifacts of interest to him. And I find that my tactics are barely adequate without his barriers.”

This is patently false, but so diffidently couched and so calculated that Mira can’t find a way around it without being angry. She turns to Dorian, features carefully arranged in a rueful expression. “Well, if you can see fit to ask that he bring me another dagger from Haggrit--”

“Here.” Sera appears beside her from a puff of smoke, one of her spare daggers extended, hilt first. The elf is still avoiding her eyes. “I got Jenny things to do. I’ll make sure the egghead brings more juice.” She puffs away again before Mira can respond. 

Mira’s mouth pulls into a sharp grimace, and she stalks to the edge of the camp without another word, leaving the Seeker and the Altus behind her.

* * *

 

They leave her alone at first because she seems to want it. They won’t move out again until Solas arrives, so it is a very long, very quiet afternoon. Eventually, Mira disappears from her perch on the ledge above the camp.

Cassandra looks ready to follow, but Dorian shakes his head. “Let her go, Cassandra.”

She isn’t gone for long. The sun is setting over the hills when she strolls back into camp with a brace of nugs hanging from her belt, already field-dressed and ready for the fire. She dry rubs the meat with a pinch of something from one of the pouches around her belt, sets them to roast on a pair of skewers over the flames, settles down with her knees drawn up to her chin, stares into the fire as the sky starts to darken. 

Dorian watches her absentmindedly rubbing the palm of her Marked hand against her shin with that thousand yard stare as long as he can bear, wishing Sera hadn’t been so overwhelmed, or that Varric were on his way instead of the apostate. He imagines he knows why the Inquisitor went into a battle rage, remembers the knife-edge moment when he had honestly feared that she would rush to the Spymaster’s side in that dark future Redcliffe instead of following him through the portal. But he does not have emotional heart-to-hearts--he quips, he teases, he preens. He does not comfort--and their Inquisitor is in desperate need of comfort.

He doesn’t think the Seeker’s duty and Andrastian devotion is what she needs, either, but he makes no motion to stop the fierce Nevarran this time when she rises and goes to the fire, folding herself with spare grace onto the rocky ground beside the Inquisitor. He does slip into the mouth of one of the tents, pulling a book from his pack, and sets to reading, determined to provide the semblance of privacy.

* * *

 

The difficulty, Mira thinks to herself, giving the nugs a turn on their spits, listening to juices sizzle on the coals at the edge of the fire, is that she is trying to recapture what she has lost with these companions. Elyse was like a sister and a mother all in one, and they had nearly a decade together as friends and fighters, leading their Fools. The urgency and intensity of the present conflict have created a false sense of intimacy in these relationships, and she has latched on to these relative strangers to anchor her heart to this cause the way her Marked hand anchors her body.

That’s all.

She tells herself this, trying to summon the logic of a true Trevelyan, the kind of cold calculus her father has sometimes taken refuge in since she was a child and their world came crashing down.

If one of these companions should be injured or die on the battlefield, she must be prepared for that loss. She must be prepared to make decisions that she knows will cause loss. She must not, in point of fact, characterize these eventualities in terms of a “loss” that must be borne at all.

/  _That’s bullshit, and you know it._  /

The voice in her head still sounds like Elyse. Will probably always sound like Elyse, until the day she dies.

/  _You love, Tawny. It’s what you do. You love, and you care, and you fight because of it._ /

Mira adjusts the nugs again, bringing out a pinch of coarse salt from her pouch and sprinkling it, watching the little nuggets pop and spark as they hit the flames below.

/  _Look at you **feeding**  them. You’re like a hawk with her young._ /

Mira scowls at the roasting nugs, licking the salt from her fingers. It is absurd to be lectured by a dead woman. She thinks of Cole, with his eerie empathy--wonders what he would make of her current turmoil.

She is still brooding when Cassandra comes to sit beside her. The Seeker’s opening gambit doesn’t surprise her--the woman frequently begins conversations that must lead to personal or private matters with exasperation, only to abandon any questions she has asked when redirected. Mira braces herself for an awkward conversation.

“I do not think I have ever told you this, but I was very young when my parents died. They were involved in a political coup, and were executed as an example.” The rich, cultured Nevarran accent gives everything Cassandra says a drama and intensity that Mira normally enjoys. This is something else altogether, and Mira tenses.

Surely no one would be so crass as to invent such a story just to appeal to her on the basis of personal history?

“My brother and I were both very young--and deemed harmless. We were sent to live with an uncle who was a Mortalitassi. You know what this is?”

Mira nods once, curtly, not sure whether to trust or not.

“It was not a…good childhood.” The Seeker settles into silence for a moment, perhaps thinking, gathering her thoughts, or waiting.

Mira gives the nugs one last turn, watching the juices begin to run clear. “Where is your brother now?” She turns her head the slightest bit, watching from the corner of her eye for a lie, a tell, a flicker. She’s not sure she’ll see it even if it’s there, because the Seeker has decent control of her face when she is being stoic.

“Dead at the hands of blood mages for many years now.” The woman’s face is impassive, though there is a thread of emotion thrumming through her voice. “I was twelve.”

On the other side of the camp, Dorian is very careful not to move a muscle, telegraphing deep interest in his book.

Mira’s eyes burn from the smoke of the fire. Her hands are clutched in fists atop her drawn-up knees. “How could you possibly have known?” Her throat feels tight.

Cassandra clasps her hands around one knee, dark eyes sliding towards the Inquisitor. “It is not the sort of thing that would have been widely known at the time, no. But Leliana and Josephine have both made efforts to evaluate your family connections in light of your position within the Inquisition and your disinterest in facilitating relations. I do not tell you this to upset you,” she cautions, turning her gaze full on the younger woman.

Mira laughs bitterly. “No? Is any of that story even true?”

Cassandra makes a small sound in her throat and turns her face away again, her profile stark. “It is all true, and more besides. I will not defend my history to you. It is no secret.”

“Then why?” Mira occupies her hands with securing the roasted nugs away from the flames to cool, wishing she could occupy her mind as easily.

The Seeker shakes her head slightly, lips thinned. “I tell you this so that you will understand that I am no stranger to tragedy. And so that you will hear me when I say: we have both learned to live with loss, and, I think, to die with honor. And that is no small thing.”

Mira hiccups a wry laugh as though she had been crying, though her face and eyes are dry. “As though it were so easy.” 

“It is just that easy,” Cassandra insists. “As is this.” She reaches out, her slim hand settling over one of Mira’s clenched fists and shaking it lightly, for emphasis. “Thank you.”

Mira’s yellow eyes fix on Cassandra’s hand on hers, then flick up uncertainly to the Seeker’s face. The woman is hiding a faint smile in the corner of her lips--it reminds Mira a little of Cullen’s smile--they both use their eyes to convey expression as much as the rest of their faces. It is little wonder that Cassandra was the one to recruit him. 

“I don’t understand,” Mira says. And that is a lie. She knows, but she’s buying time to react.

The smile becomes a little more pronounced. “For my life, Inquisitor. I have never regretted letting you keep your weapon.”

That startles a laugh from Mira, and she turns her hand suddenly, grasping the Seeker’s, and squeezing it briefly, before releasing her. “Hopefully our dear Altus will pick up the pace so I don’t have to make a habit of it. We can hardly afford to have me collapsing on the battlefield.” She deliberately brings Dorian into their conversation, shooting him a glance from the fireside and tilting her head to beckon him over.

“You bring up an important question, Inquisitor. What exactly  _was_  that?” Dorian joins them, carefully engrossed in this new topic, giving both women time to tidy away the emotions roused by their conversation.

Mira sighs ruefully and begins carving up the nugs, doling out portions of fragrant, gamy meat. “Well. If the original goal was to make the Mark stronger, we certainly seem to have accomplished that.” She begins to tell them about her experience in the tunnel after Haven, pausing to tease Dorian mercilessly for his fastidious eating.

She ignores the satisfied voice in her head.

/  ** _Just_** _like a hawk and her young._  /

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter and tumblr @lustfulpasiphae


	7. Respite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mira stops dead whenever she comes across these small camps of refugees and travelers--she halts the party, scouts a nearby spot, and they set up their own camp. It doesn’t matter how early it is--that they could be leagues away by sundown if they kept moving.

Mira stops dead whenever she comes across these small camps of refugees and travelers--she halts the party, scouts a nearby spot, and they set up their own camp. It doesn’t matter how early it is--that they could be leagues away by sundown if they kept moving.

The families get her the most. At least three generations of survivors crowded around one small fire, a battered cookpot. The chiding of children as the grandmother gives up her portion to feed other mouths.

Mira disappears from the camp, returns an hour later with a ram. She’s done this often enough now, Varric and Cassandra don’t ask questions, and Dorian is learning. She dresses the beast, careful with the tough wooly hide, prepares half of it for the sturdy iron spit over their larger fire. 

Dorian watches, later, when she inevitably makes her way to the family’s campfire--the way she approaches diffidently, all friendly smiles and unassuming--almost apologetic: “We’re leaving at first light, and I’d hate to see it go to waste.” As if the remainder of the ram won’t feed a family like that for a week or more, if they’re wise.

They offer a trade, of course--they are common and Fereldan and stubborn, and tired of charity--and Mira accepts. The granny has seen Blight and famine, lost more than she remembers she ever had, and she knows how to take kindness with grace. 

“Well, granny, I won’t say a bit of that southron whiskey would go amiss,” Mira confides. She has blood ties to noble families on at least two continents, but she learned her common graces at the sides of bandits and apostates, thieves and refugees.

The common courtesies observed, it only makes sense as night falls for the family to join them at their campfire, to share around the crisp, spicy mutton and the burn of homely southern spirits. Even the guard captain relaxes from her constant nagging about requisitions and supply to partake, sharing a horn cup with one of her scouts. There is food enough for all, and no empty bellies or yearning looks at Mira’s fire.

She leans against a cypress log at one side of the fire, watching the family, watching Varric with a small girl on his knee, telling tall tales and small lies, the ingredients of the best stories. Her heart is so full it could burst. They don’t know who she is--her face is on no coins, no accurate likeness graces the broadsheets--and there’s no reason to tell them; to do so would break the easy atmosphere and accord of fellow travelers. She doesn’t need their recognition--though she hears it, in their own hushed stories and gratitude. 

She has spent months in the Hinterlands, closing rifts, bringing blankets to the cold, food to the hungry, a respite from the endless grinding warfare to the weary. Sometimes it feels like the only thing she has done, and guilt gnaws at her--there is so *much* to do, so many places for her to be--but the faces around this fire, the small seeking hands of a child enthralled by the gleam of Cassandra’s armor, the easing of weary shoulders, the faintest shimmer of tears in a pair of rheumy eyes as the grandmother watches her family... When the Mark burns through her veins with distilled agony, she remembers this. She paints this over the blinding starburts of pain in her mind, and she is content. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on twitter or tumblr @lustfulpasiphae


	8. Fair Illios

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fair Illios, where golden Paris did take most beautiful Helena; unassailable Illios, which fell to the might of the Antivan city-states, in the Ancient age!
> 
> During a rare interlude, Mira reads a bit from the tale of fair Illios to Cullen.

The cavernous room was quiet, peaceful. A fire crackled in the ornate fireplace, the gentle scent of hickory smoke joining the softer homey scents of washed linens, metal, leather soap, oils for cleaning equipment and also the sweeter scent of coconut under it all, and something piquant like green citrus.

The occasional shiff of a turning page would break the quiet. Sometimes the quiet susurrus of shifting bed linens. Sometimes a half-vocalized hum of a bit of a half-remembered ballad.

A knock sounded at the door, breaking the quiet. A soft sound, possibly disappointment, possibly annoyance, from one throat, and the brief arrest of a turned page before motion resumed.

“Come in!”

The disadvantage of a door located below the lofted floor of your bedchamber was that you had no idea who was entering until they were at the top of the stairs and it was far too late to do anything about it. A brown hand settled on the rondel of the bannister at the top of the stairs, and Dorian had a hard time controlling his expression as he got a look at the scene before him.

Cullen Stanton (and Maker, that gem of information was never going to be forgotten, what a treat that had been, at Halamshiral) Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition forces, was sprawled out across the large, richly appointed bed, his back and broad shoulders propped against the heavy oak headboard, curls tousled and lips relaxed, in fact the whole of him relaxed in a way Dorian had a hard time recalling ever seeing before, one large hand cradling a fairly weighty leather-bound octavo, while the other arm rested with tenderness across the chest of the woman reclined against his side, his fingers stroking her opposite shoulder. The Inquisitor was in breeches and a very loose linen shirt that clearly belonged to the man beside her, if the amount of exposed shoulder and collar bone was anything to go by, her chestnut hair feathered back beneath her head, her knees drawn up and bare feet planted on the coverlet, a much slimmer volume propped against her thighs.

Cullen gave him a look, but didn’t do much more than shift slightly and move his arm from Mira’s shoulders. Mira tilted her knees to the side so she could see what had caused Cullen to stop petting her, and her golden eyes settled on Dorian warily.

“What?”

Dorian held up his hands to forestall her. “Sheath your blade, I beg you. I haven’t come to destroy this truly precious domestic moment.” He treated her to a wicked grin, making it clear the mention of blades and sheathes had been entirely deliberate, and felt rewarded by her eyerolling. He nodded to Cullen. “Your dear Commander asked after a volume on Tevene siege warfare, and I’ve sent to Minrathous for a copy, but in the meantime I thought this might interest him.” He waggled the volume in his hand enticingly and in explanation of his presence.

Mira’s brows shot up, and she felt Cullen shift under her as he set his book aside and asked, “What’s that?”

Dorian smirked. “Just an account of the siege of Illios.”

Cullen made a slight sound of disapproval--Maker, if Mira could have sat him and Cassandra down next to each other while they did that, she’d have lost her mind laughing and would have driven them both to distraction. “Hardly *military* history.”

Mira shifted slightly, holding a finger in the spine of her book of poetry to mark her place. “What’s Illios?”

Dorian grinned further. “Where, not what! Fair Illios, where golden Paris did take most beautiful Helena; unassailable Illios, which fell to the might of the Antivan city-states, in the Ancient age!”

Mira smiled slightly. “Sounds fanciful. Doesn’t sound at *all* like siege warfare and how to calibrate trebuchets though.”

“It is most definitely not,” Cullen muttered with disapproval.

Mira chuckled and beckoned at Dorian. “Alright, I’m convinced. Bring it here, and then take your sassy behind out of here. I need to see what all the fuss is about.”

Dorian winked broadly. “I’m certain you do.”

Cullen sighed heavily, a soft thunk of his head hitting the headboard echoing through the room. “You two are a menace.”

“Oh definitely. Good thing Elyse is busy in the gardens.” Mira grinned at Dorian, took the book, and flicked her fingers at him. “Shoo, you wicked Tevinter. I was enjoying very much being cuddled and you are interfering.”

“I saw a very agitated Ambassador in the Great Hall on my way up. Perhaps I had better find a misplaced case of wine to pester her about.” Dorian headed down the stairs, laughing softly at Mira’s fervent “Yes, please, Maker, don’t let her--“ and the muffled sound of a mouth stoppered by a hand.

What a pair of precious idiots.

* * *

 

When the door had shut behind Dorian, Mira tucked the book under one arm and squirmed around on the bed, making herself comfortable again, this time leaning more upright against Cullen’s side, tucking herself against him and curling up a bit, her legs thrown over his, the book curled in her arms in her lap. She gave him a sheepish smile, appreciating the tolerant, amused look on his face and the willing warmth of the arm he curled down around her hips and used to tug her closer. She nuzzled her face against his shoulder, lips brushing the side of his neck very slightly, before she turned her attention to the book Dorian had left.

It was a small volume, but thick, and when she opened it to flip through the first few pages curiously, she discovered it was also utterly incomprehensible. She made a little sound of aggravation in her throat and ran a fingertip along a line of vaguely familiar symbols. “This is in ancient Tevene!”

She felt Cullen tilt his head against hers, peering into her lap, and one of his hands pushed the book down so he could see better. “Ah.” He pressed an absent kiss to her forehead, and liberated the text from her, flipping to about halfway through the volume.

She watched him curiously, a smile curling in the corner of her lips when he licked at his thumb absently and turned the pages. Maker, he was gorgeous, and sweetly unselfconscious in his manner when he was engrossed in some task.

“Here.” He set the book back into her lap, fingers spanning the pages to hold it open. “There’s a translation in the second half.”

She blinked down in surprise at the pages, with their measured lines. “Oh, it’s *poetry*!”

“It’s *verse*, I don’t know if I’d call it poetry.” Cullen settled back against the headboard again, his hand stroking idle patterns against her hip as he slid his arm back around her.

Mira hummed thoughtfully, running her fingertip down the page before squirming against him one last time and then beginning to read. “Sing, O Muse, the anger of Achillus, heir of Peleon, that brought countless ills upon the Antivans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying into the Fade, and many a hero did it yield as prey to dogs and crows, for so were the counsels of the Maker fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreon, king of men, and great Achillus, first fell out with one another.” Mira hummed again at the end of the opening stanza, her fingertip resting under the last line. “You know, this is why the Divine is supposed to be a woman.”

Cullen chuckled, squeezing her hip gently. “It gets worse. Keep reading.”

She glanced at him from below her lashes. His head was tilted back, eyes shut, a very faint smile curled around his lips. She turned her attention back to the page. “And which of the children of the Maker was it that set them on to quarrel?--Oh good, meddlesome spirits, this should get on fabulously--It was the first of his children, for they were angry with the king and sent a pestilence upon the host to plague the people--is this about a *Blight*??--because the son of Atreon had dishonored Crissius the seer--oooooh, Elyse would think this was interesting. Do you think it actually says “seer” in the original Tevene?--Now Crissius had come to the ships of the Antivans to free his daughter--oh, of course, it wouldn’t be a tale of the Ancient age without some plunder and rapine--“

“Tawny.” Cullen’s voice was a soft rumble.

Her teeth clicked faintly as she shut her mouth on another pithy observation, and her golden eyes sought his face a trifle guiltily. He was smiling wider, looking amused, not annoyed, and he’d tilted his head back down again to study her with his warm amber eyes. Maker, she loved him so much, and it was so wonderful to have moments like this where he wasn’t the Commander, or an ex-Templar, or a soldier, or her advisor, but just her lover, her love, the man she spent her nights curled around or yearning to hold. “Sorry,” she murmured wryly, giving him an answering smile.

His fingertips brushed up under the hem of her shirt--his shirt, really--touching her hip gently, caressing. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stop you, but--“

“Hm?” Her eyes fell closed as she focused on his touch, the book in her hands sagging.

His hand stilled, telegraphing his hesitation. She leaned in close, nuzzled his neck again, resting her forehead against him. He chuckled, his palm sliding, warm and callused and tender, around her side to stroke open against the soft curve of her belly. She shivered slightly, making a little sound in the back of her throat that might have been his name.

“I was going to recommend a passage to read, but if you have other ideas…”

Her lips pressed to his pulse, feeling the trailing edges of his stubble. “I *always* have other ideas. Maker help you if you ever knew the sorts of things I’m thinking about at the War Table.” She grinned against his skin when he twitched slightly.

“Maker’s breath, woman.”

She pulled back and grinned at him impudently. “I love when you do that.”

One brow went up slightly. “What’s that?” His eyes were tender just at the mention of that particular four letter word.

Mira leaned in close, rubbed her lips against his. “When you get growly and exasperated and call me ‘woman’.”

“Remind me never to leave you alone with Rylen,” he muttered, half under his breath.

“Hah!” She gave him another kiss, this one deeper, teasing his lips with the tip of her tongue. Her golden eyes danced when she pulled back. “I grew up in the Marches--if I were going to fall for a bonny laddie with a Starkhaven drawl, I’d have done it long since and had plenty of opportunity.”

She smiled to herself, looking back down at the pages before her, which had fallen open to another selection in her neglect. “Oooh. Look. The beautiful Helena appears!”

Cullen glanced down, hand still warm on her belly. He made a slightly pained sound. “King Priam and Helena on the walls of Illios.”

“Is that bad?” She was intrigued that he seemed to know the story so well.

He frowned a little, hand stroking. “It’s just a very tragic story. Helena was said to be the most beautiful woman of the Ancient era, and men fought to possess her. With very little concern for the lady’s wishes.” He flicked her a wry glance.

“Well, I’m glad *that’s* not the sort of thing that happens any longer,” she replied archly, thinking of some of the more lurid proposals Josephine had fielded since Halamshiral. Cullen’s lips twitched.

Mira snugged the book closer, peering down at the page and browsing through the lines. “Who’s this Ulysses?”

Cullen smiled and tilted his head back again, closing his eyes. “Helena will tell you, if you read. The King has much the same question.”

Mira could get used to this scholarly aspect of Cullen. She had known he read--and was entranced by his keen interest in history and military theory. But this was barely history--mostly literature, and yet he clearly had read it deeply, and despite his grumbling to the contrary, clearly cared about the story. She dragged a finger up, hunting down a thread of conversation in the verse, and then began to read.

“The old man next looked upon Ulysses: “Tell me,” he said, “who is that other, shorter by a head than Agamemnon, but broader across the chest and shoulders? His armor is laid upon the ground, and he stalks in front of the ranks as if he were some great wooly ram ordering his ewes--Andraste wept, that’s fabulous!--And Helena answered, “He is Ulysses, a man of great craft, son of Laertes. He was born in rugged Ithaca, and excels in all manner of stratagems and subtle cunning.” Mira grinned broadly and nudged her shoulder against Cullen’s chest. “I like this clever bastard, whoever he is. Sounds like *you*.”

Cullen laughed. “Hardly. Ulysses is sly and clever and calculating. I’m afraid I am a blunt instrument, my lady.”

Mira chortled. “I’m not touching that.”

His eyes flicked open, exasperated, to fix on her face. “Maker’s breath.”

“Teasing,  _mon coeur_ , don’t blush.” She smirked to herself, glancing back down at the page, scanning ahead. “Maker, they do ramble don’t they? Oh here, we go--Ulysses, on the other hand, when he rose to speak, was at first silent and kept his eyes fixed upon the ground. There was no play nor graceful movement of his scepter--I bet there wasn’t--“

“Tawny!”

Another throaty chuckle. “Alright, alright--He kept it straight and stiff like--Andraste fucking wept, I’m sorry, but CULLEN--“

“You’re truly the most ridiculous woman in the world. I’m going to remember this the next time Josephine suggests you speak to foreign dignitaries.”

“Fine, fine--like a man unpracticed in oratory. One might have taken him for a mere churl or simpleton; but when he raised his voice, and the words came driving from his deep chest like winter snow before the wind, then there was none to touch him, and no man thought further of what he looked like.” She finished the passage without another glib interjection, and a secret smile teased her lips as she traced her fingers along the lines of text. “There are definitely redeeming moments in this mess. That didn’t seem too sad, though.”

Cullen sighed softly, tugging her closer. “Somewhere before that passage. Helena reveals that she has been stolen away from her true husband, leaving a child behind, and her family. Her husband and his allies have come to Illios to take her back.”

“So it *is* a bit of a siege.” She seemed amused by this.

“A bloody battle and a long siege with heavy losses on both sides. Not the sort of battle I ever hope to fight.” His eyes were open to the barest slits, fixed on her with care.

Mira tilted her head, setting the book aside so she could slide her arms around him and rest against him. She pressed a warm, sucking kiss to his throat, and tucked her head under his chin. “Not if I can help it.”

“Maker willing.”

She closed her eyes, listening to his heartbeat, pacing her breaths to his, feeling herself drift softly, feeling his warm hand on her belly stroke slightly, periodically. Not a touch with any particular intent behind it--but the faintest thought, echoing in the back of her mind. A sad queen, stolen away, and a child and husband left behind. She curled closer, breathed his name softly against his skin, and a tender strand of words, strung together like pearls, a simple “I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sections of the Illiad read by Mira are adapted from the Sam Butler translation available here: http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html


End file.
